Out of the numerous posts on your facebook wall, maybe this one caught your attention because of the title. Now the title is nothing exceptional considering the smartest expression I could come up with the name of the movie and the other word is “AND”. I guess it is that F*** Word which caught your eye. It is a gimmick. An Intended one. No One Killed Jessica with all goodness of its intentions makes use of this gimmick.
I do not have a problem with cuss words. It is a convenient word most of the time. But if it is enunciated, emphasized then you are using it to sensationalize things. That puts a question mark on two things: Your Intentions and Your Smartness as a film maker.
No One Killed Jessica tries to document and dramatize the struggle that ensued to ensure that justice was done in the Jessica Lal murder Case. Now, there are two aspects to it: Documentation and Dramatization.
The Movie in terms of documentation achieves a lot. It briefly touches the incident, the related proofs and witnesses.It also talks about the lack of witness protection program in our country and cites this case as an example. If I look at it from this perspective, the movie is important considering in the last decade or so, we have only a few movies which have documented the happenings of our times and their implications on our nation as a whole. That is the reason we need movies like this, Black Friday or Sehar.
The Dramatization lets the movie down. The movie in terms of the story has three parts: The Incident, The Struggle and The Heroics. Until the Failed Struggle, Vidya Balan(as Sabrina Lal) literally carries the movie. The lady has that tremendous capability of internalizing her characters. So what you see are the close up shots of Sabrina Lal very much in pain and the hopelessness of her journey. You empathize with her just because of the sensitivity with which Vidya Balan plays Sabrina. I would have loved the movie to be more specific about what and how Sabrina Lal Fought, but the movie unfortunately was interested in the heroics.
The Heroics is what trivializes the movie. It is mostly crass and naive. It is a F Word out of place, rather many of them. Rani Mukherjee in her role as the Journalist somehow loses the sensitivity of the situation and her talks of justice come out more as exercises of Self Indulgence. The movie then becomes the poster child of Rani Mukherjee's character and her heroics. The pitch of the movie shifts from documenting to populist, mitigating its cause.
All said, The background score of the movie is sometimes sombre and sometimes exhilarating and very true to the emotive tone of the movie and is somewhere responsible for this movie being felt better than it really is.
A story like Jessica's is pivotal in our history. It has served out to show some major flaws in our system of justice and may serve as a case to creation of new laws, so that such incidents do not happen. On the other end, it has meant a great personal struggle for some people who have endured 10 years with grief and determination which are not two easy emotions to carry together. For most of us, it is a source of cynicsm and admiration alike. Holistically, it is just irony just like the need of emphasizing on the F Word to sell it.
2 comments:
That's one thing which struck me in the promos as well. It's almost as if the movie is about rani mukherjee's new bold avatar, instead of a struggle to find justice in a country where one rarely finds it.
Haven't had the opportunity to watch it yet. Will write some more after I do.
Nice review(though I think it's a bit more than that)
The point you bring out about documentizing our times is valid. There are only a few cine makers who do that. Vidya has done a good job but i feel that she gets a rough deal, her character is too mellow...Rani is bit over the top at times and F word is certainly misplaced and forced.
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